October 29, 2018

Blog Post

Power factor is a measurement distribution engineers use to figure out how difficult it is to provide power to whatever we plug in. Every device that pulls electricity from the grid, from a small phone charger to large industrial loads, has a power factor that can be measured.

Exactly what is power factor (or PF)? The easiest way to understand it is to see it.

October 4, 2018

Blog Post

We can say we collect 10 million records per-day, per-house. Or, we can say the database is many terabytes large. Or that we have the world’s largest collection of energy, water, and gas data for use by academic researchers. However, it isn’t until recently that I think Pecan Street has crossed into the “Big Data” realm.

October 2, 2018

Blog Post

Thanks to our friends at Environmental Defense Fund, we spent some time last week shooting new photos of two research families and flying a drone to get some cool footage of all the solar panels around the Mueller neighborhood. Look at all those solar panels!

September 24, 2018

Blog Post

Clean electricity is booming. Last year in California, solar power plants generated nearly 12% of the state’s total electricity production and distributed solar likely produced another 5%. Texas got 18% of its electricity from wind and solar. In many markets, unsubsidized clean energy costs the same or less than conventional fossil-fuel powered plants. And the cost of clean, renewable electricity continues to fall.

August 9, 2018

News

Why are some morning commutes so much worse than others? New research shows that nighttime and early-morning energy use can be a good predictor of morning traffic congestion. Sean Qian, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and Ph.D. student Pinchao Zhang created a model that mined data on electricity consumption from 322 homes in Austin, Texas, and used artificial intelligence to predict what traffic would look like the next morning.

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